When we
moved here to Hartsville I think they were still showing movies at the
old Temple Theater. The Temple Theater was built as an auditorium and
meeting place. Pretty soon they put a screen up on the stage and started
showing movies. Teenage boys would sit in the balcony. They bought bags
of peanuts to throw at the rats. Of course, that’s just what the
rats wanted.

After the
theater closed there was a vegetable market just inside. The rest of
the theater was getting pretty dilapidated. Pigeons got in there and
the roof was about to cave in. When I was the building official for
the City I asked the man who bought the three buildings that included
the theater to do something with it. It was right in the middle of town.
It was where the Centennial Park is now. It faced 5th Street.

I met
him there one day and we went inside. He said he thought the building
was sound. We got about half way into the theater when the floor gave
way and he fell through. All that was sticking up above the floor was
his head. He said, “Yeah. I reckon we ought to tear it down.”

The Center Theater
was built in 1935 with WPA labor. It was built for performing arts.
It had a flyloft. The town had to pay part of the cost. So, they set
up a township and these people that lived about five miles around Hartsville
paid a little bit of tax. That was paid off in 1967, I believe. When
they built it they had some footlights but no lighting as we know it
today. They had no dressing rooms.

Just before the
Second World War we had some people here who wanted to do some live
theater. They got started but then the war came along and stopped it.
All during the war years and up until we came here in 1959, it was a
movie theater. There was a screen up on the stage about six feet behind
the main drape. During that time the seats were slashed. There was gum
on the floor. It was pretty torn up.

W. W. Tisdale,
he’s a good old fellow, I think the world of him. He was the choral
leader at school. Each spring he would put on a play. I got started
early on helping him with them. I had a float building company in Saluda
and we brought that here with us. For that reason, he asked me to help
him build scenery and rigging for the lights. We did “Oklahoma”
and Mr. Tisdale did all the music on a portable organ.

About 1965, the
theater was a mess, and the mayor and some other people got interested
in restoring the theater for live performances. During that time, the
man who presented the movies in there built the Berry Theater. The community
raised $200,000 and we put dressing rooms in the back, stage rigging,
and lighting. We built a thrust stage to cover the orchestra pit when
it was needed. The drape that is hanging in there now is the original
drape that was placed in there in 1935.

We had a restored
theater but nobody to use it. So, I called a few people that might be
interested and asked them to meet me at the theater. They were interested
and so we decided to have a community-wide meeting. We advertised the
meeting and a bunch of people showed up. We set up a steering committee
and got things underway. I was president of it for about ten years.

We did
“Don’t Drink the Water.” I remember it so well. It
was a nice little play and it was successful. Today the Hartsville Community
Players are still going strong. The young woman who is directing the
upcoming play was there from the beginning. She took part in everything
we did.

This is
all in that book I wrote about Hartsville, Scraps of History: Hartsville,
S.C., 1950-2003